


a tragedy with a happy ending

by theexistentialqueer



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Healing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, No Beta, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Canon-Typical Violence, Trans Male Character, Unrequited Love, babies ever after
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 05:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18162161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theexistentialqueer/pseuds/theexistentialqueer
Summary: Everyone else is celebrating the birth of Kaneki and Touka's baby.Mutsuki is too afraid to face it.(Mutsuki meets Kaneki Ichika for the first time. Exploration of the Qs family dynamic, Mutsuki/Urie, and Mutsuki and Touka's relationship. Explicit [non-sexual] Mutsuki/Urie and references to canon Kaneki/Touka and one-sided Mutsuki/Kaneki.)





	a tragedy with a happy ending

**Author's Note:**

> **Update:** (10/18/19) - I feel like I should open this with an apology, but an apology's not quite right. I've spent the last year unpacking a lot of internalized transphobia and coming to a place where I can allow myself to think of myself as trans. It's been a long road. If my writing of Mutsuki carries with it (and I'm sure it does) that lingering transphobia: I'm sorry if it hurts you. I think that writing these pieces has made me stronger and helped me grow on my own journey of gender discovery. I thought about deleting these or orphaning them, but I don't want to cut myself off from writing that helped me grow towards understanding who I really am.
> 
> I should apologize to myself first and foremost for being afraid to embrace who I am.
> 
> * * *
> 
> I said I didn't know if I was going to write anything else! I lied!
> 
> You can consider this to be set in the same 'verse as "the ghosts can't come home." It is partially a post-Dragon pseudo-character study of Mutsuki, framed through his relationships with Urie and Saiko, and Kaneki and Touka.
> 
> Please note that there is explicit reference to physical child abuse (no sexual assault), as is depicted in canon.
> 
> Title comes from the Raymond Chandler quote, “The detective story is a tragedy with a happy ending.”
> 
> Give Mutsuki a fucking break, get him a therapist, and let him be fucking happy.

It's Saiko's visit that first clues him in that he's missing something.

Saiko, who slams his door open as soon as he answers it, who yells, " _MUCCHAN, HOW ARE YOU_ " as if that's her way of starting the conversation, and when Mutsuki stutters out an, "I'm f-fine," Saiko grabs the front of his shirt with both hands and tugs, so he's forced to lean down and look her in the eye as she says, "Are you going to hole yourself up here and pretend nothing's happening?"

"Ah?" Mutsuki asks, and he can feel how nervous he sounds, nervous from the way Saiko grips his shirt, nervous from how _everything_ these days makes him nervous, as he's realized that his only claim to authority is married to his ability to kill.

And that ability to kill comes from his own violent impulses, fed by things that happened he couldn't control, and how he just--he wants to--

Mutsuki has started to see himself as a kakuhou, and has started to build barriers of quinque metal around the nastiness of his mind. His mind is at frame three now, and he'll work on that built-up nastiness, until he can frame out, mentally, and control it. Until he can remember his mother, watching passively while his father shoved his head into the bathwater, and Mutsuki choked and cried and said, _Please, Papa, I'm sorry, please, I'm sorry, I respect you--_

His thoughts are spiraling again, and Saiko is talking to him. Firmly, without any regard for his mental state. Deliberately. Pulling him back into normalcy.

"Mucchan, you're not so dumb you forgot what happened, right?"

She says it so simply, like it's just a question, but Saiko is watching him closely, and her tone is heavy, and it's such a loaded question.

_Mucchan, do you remember what happened just now?_

Yes. You were talking to me, and I froze and had a flashback.

_Mucchan, do you remember what we were talking about?_

Yes. We were talking about sensei, and that--sensei and that woman, and she went into labor, and you wanted to talk about--

_Mucchan, if you do remember, do you still want to hurt--_

No, no, no, no, no, no, no no no nononono _no_ , I don't want to hurt anybody, don't look at me, don't hurt me, _I don't want to hurt you_ \--

Saiko's fingers curl against the sides of Mutsuki's jaw, and she's smiling. "Mucchan," she says, "Maman asked me to ask you if you want to meet the baby."

The baby.

Mutsuki remembers the woman screaming, and Urie convulsing around Mutsuki's hand piercing his chest, and Saiko embracing Mutsuki, her heavy warmth suddenly enveloping him, the sound of her crying in his ear.

 _Saiko loves Mucchan!_ she had yelled, and he'd thought distantly, _This is what a mother should feel like_.

A baby.

He remembers a baby in his own family, distantly--a cousin of his mother's who had given birth, and his parents had dragged them along to present a pretext of familial support. The whole time during the car ride there, his parents had exchanged insults about the mother.

 _"She's only 19,"_ his mother said disparagingly. _"What kind of slut gets pregnant at that age?"_

 _"She's your cousin,"_ his father had said, as if in accusation. _"No wonder they wound up like this."_

Before they got out of the car, his mother slapped him. _"Hey! Tooru! You better wake up and act like a proper girl. Your cousin just had a baby and you better be happy about it."_

His parents only ever cared how they looked to other people.

And he'd grabbed the fabric of his skirt between his hands and pretended so well.

How does he pretend with a baby he has no script for?

"Mucchan," Saiko says, "do you remember the first time you saw a baby?"

In that house, his family had gathered to welcome that cousin, and Mutsuki had wondered why he was even there. He didn't know his cousins, he didn't care about the baby. He'd never met a baby before he could care about. Babies were loud, squalling things on the train, and they were too loud for Mutsuki, but somehow other people could endure it.

That day, his parents walked him and his brother into the room where their cousin sat, and Mutsuki looked at the baby, and Mutsuki's mother said, _"That's your cousin. (It's a pain but) you're responsible for whatever your family does, and since they're younger than you, that goes double. You have to be like a big sister, Tooru. If she messes up, it's your fault."_

His cousin had looked so small. Who would they have grown in to, if no one tried to make that baby be what they thought it should be?

He'd looked at his cousin and felt nothing.

"Mucchan," Saiko says, and her hands are holding his face, her face near his, and she says again, "Mucchan, do you want to meet the baby?"

The baby.... Mutsuki thinks, disjointedly, and then he remembers. Sensei's baby.

 _The_ baby.

His baby...and _hers_.

He'd sensed her movements, seen the way her arms had moved to cover her abdomen, he'd understood in a distant way what it meant, and he'd acted anyways.

The child he tried to kill.

"Will they--" Mutsuki's voice is weak, and he feels it fail. Licks his lips, swallows, tries to make a better case for himself.

He can picture her, fighting to defend her people, to defend the people sensei claimed as his own. He hears her voice screaming in his head, "That's my _HUSBAND_!"

Her.

_His cousin, bearing up under his family's insults, his parents implying that she'd slept with someone else because of how young she was pregnant._

Her.

_"Your sister was a stupid slut anyway," his father had said, swinging his fist so it met with his mother's temple, barely missing her eye. Mutsuki had seen this through a cracked door, and he remembered his mother crying, "I've never cheated, I've never cheated!" while his father's fist rained down on her and Mutsuki ran to hide beneath the covers of his bed. Not even the heavy fabric of his bedspread could drown out the sound of his mother screaming._

Why are babies born into such painful circumstances?

Why is...anyone...born?

It's too much.

* * *

 

Mutsuki only realizes he blacked out later, when he comes to on that comfortable, familiar couch inside the Chateau. The smell of something cooking hits him, and it's all edible, grilled fish, fried rice, the sweet tang of sauteed vegetables. He can feel the smells rolling over himself, and a faint soft pressure at his side. He looks there and sees Saiko, curled against him.

Saiko leans in against him, smelling warm and faintly sweaty. "I guess you're our dinner guest tonight," she says, grinning. "I wish you weren't a _guest_ , but you better eat your fill."

And since he's the guest, even though he's so exhausted he feels like dying, they make Mutsuki stand up and address the new recruits. He says something vague about bravery, and then about honor, and the moment he does, he feels like he's walking over Shirazu's grave.

He can't remember how he fumbles his way through the toast after that.

That night he tosses and turns in his sleep, and he wakes to find himself on his old bed, the blanket pulled tight around him.. He can feel the vast wall he's curved towards facing him, and the pictures are gone now, but he can see them in his mind's eye, stabbed by fine knives into the wall, each knife-point gouged into the face of her--that woman--sensei's-- _Kaneki_ 's wife.

" _He's my HUSBAND_!" she'd screamed, and the word, _husband_ , plays over and over in Mutsuki's head.

 _Husband...husband...husband..._ but it doesn't feel right.

Not in relation to himself.

A creaking sound, and Mutsuki realizes his door is slowly opening. He freezes, and feels a  body settle at his back. Pinned between the wall he'd defaced in his crumbling rage and the warm presence of someone behind him, he's afraid to put anything into words, afraid he's going to shatter.

"I heard you crying in your sleep," Urie says, "and from the sound of your breathing when I came to check on you, it sounded like you were awake."

"I'm sorry to bother you." Mutsuki pulls the blanket tighter around himself, wishing it would erase him. He knows what Urie is trying to do, in his soft-spoken, considerate way, and it's too much, Mutsuki wishes he would just go.

He's just so--

"Mutsuki. Are you scared?"

\--scared. 

 _Aaahh_ , Mutsuki thinks. _He knows my thoughts before I even think them_.

Urie's hand settles heavily against his head, curled over where his ear is covered, and his fingers twist into the blanket. He pulls the blanket away, and Mutsuki's grip is too weak to hold it in place. He feels it falling away from him, the plush fabric tickling his cheek softly, like snow.

The wall is white.

It looks grey in the darkness, illuminated only by the crack of lighting shining under his door from the hallway, and the faint illumination of streetlamps filtering through the bedroom curtains. Someone patched it, and they did a good job, but there are tiny shadows at some parts, the echoes of the holes they filled, and Mutsuki can picture it in his mind before, a collage of photos, as if someone was making a scrapbook, but a knife in each one, stabbed with fury through the face of a pale-haired man or a dark-haired woman.

"The first step is to stop hiding," Urie says. "Mutsuki."

Stop hiding? Urie took the blanket away. He has nothing to hide himself with.

He remembers the first photo he'd hung. He's pretty sure he'd blacked out for the rest.

"I killed my parents," someone says. It's a voice without a body, a voice that sounds familiar. "My brother too."

A pause. No one answers.

"My father beat me, and my mother would just watch. My brother never did anything to help. Sometimes my father would look at me like-- Do you know what it feels like, when you're a woman and a man looks at you? Like you're supposed to _give_ them something. Like they want to _take_ something. I didn't...like that. When sensei had us dress up as women to lure out the Nutcracker, we were in a club, and all those men were _looking_  at me..."

Why does that sound so familiar?

"And then one day I just--I don't really remember what happened clearly. Something did. And I just...shattered."

Like glass dropped carelessly on the floor.

Into pieces.

His throat hurts.

Oh.

It's his voice.

He's the one speaking.

Baring himself like this, shamefully...

"Hey, Urie-kun..." he asks, his voice weak. He wants to cry but his eyes are dry, they don't even burn. "I'm a monster, aren't I?"

He is. He's a monster. A real monster, worse than that dragon, because the dragon didn't understand things like _friends_ and _family_ , the dragon didn't close its fingers around a kitchen knife and stab its father's belly, didn't look at the first person that made it feel human and try to kill everything that mattered to them, didn't try to kill the people trying to save it. The dragon didn't have feelings like that.

The dragon was just a beast.

It's him who's the monster.

"Every time I talked to Kuroiwa or his father, I used to picture them dying in my head," Urie says, cutting off his thoughts. "When I'd talk to Kuroiwa, and he'd talk about getting promoted, I'd think, 'And I look forward to you dying just trying, you bastard.' When I talked to his father, I'd picture his coffin, and him in pieces, just like my father was when we buried him."

He feels Urie's weight on the bed shift, and Mutsuki turns to look at him. Urie isn't leaning over him, precisely, it's just that the way he's turned to face Mutsuki, with his upper leg propped up on the bed for support, and Urie's sheer tallness, it feels like a sort of--hovering.

"Doing bad things doesn't make you a monster. What makes a monster is when you realize those things are bad...and you do them anyway, because you don't care. Do you think the things you've done are wrong?"

Are they wrong?

His father's blood had poured over the handle of the knife onto his hands, hot and wet, and there was a part of Mutsuki that had enjoyed that. The desperate look his mother had given him, that terror, the way she'd pleaded, begging for her life. His brother, who'd looked on with shock and horror he'd never shown before, when Mutsuki was being beaten.

At the time, he'd enjoyed it. Making them pay for hurting him, for watching him being hurt and doing nothing.

Afterwards, he'd felt so sickened by it his mind made up pretend memories so he wouldn't have to remember.

"Is it bad to kill someone who's hurting you?" He can barely hear his own voice.

"I don't think self-defense can ever be called bad," Urie says. "But what about the rest?"

Stabbing Investigator Akira. The attack on re: his knife cutting into the soft flesh of sensei's face, the look of shock sensei had shown. The 24th ward, and those ghouls who hadn't even been trying to fight back. Kuroiwa's wife, not even facing them across the interrogation table, her eyes downcast because she knew nothing she said could save herself. The dragon, and that woman, her, Kaneki's wife, and how greedily he'd watched for her blood with every slice of his knife, every whipping spear of his kagune. His fist punching through Urie's belly, Urie's blood soaking into his sleeve, hot and dark and red, and Urie saying,  _I won't let you die_.

_It was wrong._

"It was wrong," Mutsuki says.

A gentle pressure, Urie's hand on his shoulder, warm and heavy. Encouraging.

"And I care that it was wrong," Mutsuki adds.

"Then you're not a monster," Urie says.

Like it's so simple. Like the world, like everything, is that simple. So simple, like in kindergarten and you're playing _kagome kagome_ , and it's Mutsuki on the chair, the blindfold over his eyes, and he can say a name, but saying it won't hurt anyone, because it's only pretend that he's a demon.

Like the world isn't broken down into those who have and those who don't, into boss and subordinate, wanting and wanted, taking and taken, harming and hurt.

Man and woman.

Mutsuki looks up at Urie, and Urie is looking down at him, really looking at him, and it's not--

It's not bad.

It's not like the night with the quinx squad in that club, when Mutsuki had put on a dress and some makeup, and the men around him had been watching, watching, _watching_.

Urie is just looking.

Like all he sees is Mutsuki.

Not a woman.

Just Mutsuki.

He doesn't feel himself move until his hands are curled into Urie's shirt, and the look Urie is giving him shifts to one of muted surprise. Urie is moving closer, and closer, and it's not Urie doing it, Mutsuki realizes, it's his own hands pulling Urie in, but Urie isn't fighting it, and then their faces are inches away from each other.

"Mutsuki..?" Urie asks, like he's unsure. He remembers a time Urie never sounded unsure, when Urie acted as if he knew everything he did was right.

But he's leaning in now, and the realization doesn't make Mutsuki pull back. It's not the unknowable stranger he'd dreaded in his worst imaginings, some man he couldn't picture, some man who was just a man like any other man, the kind of men who leered at him because all they could see were a curve of soft flesh and how they could use it. It's not that kind of man leaning over him.

It's Urie.

Mutsuki closes his eyes and waits.

Slowly he feels Urie's body shifting, Urie's arms settling at either of his sides, and it feels like a sort of reverse deja-vu of that moment at the auction after Urie had stabbed him, and Mutsuki had finally manifested his kagune, and he'd curled them around Urie like some kind of embrace.

It feels safe like that.

And then Urie's lips are suddenly against his, and it's not like anything Mutsuki's imaginings of some shadowy, nebulous form, vaguely human, sexless, just a body with a mouth that would want his. He'd never imagined past that point because he couldn't imagine someone who would want to kiss someone like him. Not even sensei.

Urie's lips are chapped, the skin rough-edged against Mutsuki's lips, and Mutsuki's eyes are open but Urie's aren't. _Ah_ , Mutsuki thinks. _He wanted this_.

And it's not that Mutsuki does or doesn't want it. It's unexpected. He doesn't know what he wants. Only that Urie's mouth on his feels soft, and Urie leaning over him feels warm, and Mutsuki doesn't feel either. 

So he thinks, I'm okay with this.

His eyes drift closed and his mouth opens against Urie's, and he flicks his tongue out, licking against Urie's lips. Urie shudders, and kisses him again, and his lips part, just a bit, but it's enough for Mutsuki to push his way in. Urie has a slight overbite--there's enough of a gab--Mutsuki presses his tongue along the ridge of Urie's upper teeth, and pushes is tongue up against it and through. Urie shudders, leans in, and Mutsuki finds himself bracing his arms against the bed to stay upright, Urie hovering over him.

He doesn't think he'd accept this if it wasn't Urie. He doesn't think he would be okay. But it's Urie who shifts his weight back slightly so they're both upright again, and Urie who says, "Sorry, are you okay?" and that's all Mutsuki needs--he wraps his arms around Urie's neck so he can pull him in to kiss him again.

It's scary. He doesn't know what he's doing, and he can feel, his mouth against Urie's, that Urie doesn't know what he's doing either. They're only fluids and body parts, it's just Urie and Mutsuki, and Mutsuki's heart racing desperately. He knows, he can feel, Urie's heart beating just as hard, but that doesn't feel real to him.

Urie pulls away.

"Sorry," he says again. "( _I wanted to do that for a while_.) Tell me if I should stop."

Mutsuki doesn't tell him to stop. 

He doesn't realize he's moving his hands until his fingers are twisting into the fabric of Urie's shirt, and then Urie's fingers are threading through the hair at the back of Mutsuki's head, and he's leaning in again.

He kisses Mutsuki's mouth again, and Mutsuki can feel that sensation, of something brushing against him, and it's not...unpleasant. Urie's mouth opens to pull his lower lip between his teeth, and Mutsuki shudders. He grabs Urie's shoulders and pulls himself against him, and Urie kisses him harder, his tongue pushing into Mutsuki's mouth and dragging against his teeth.

It's a sensation he's never known before, another person's tongue in his mouth, and he finds himself opening his mouth wider, his tongue twisting out to meet Urie's. The brush of his tongue against Urie's is electric. Mutsuki shifts around so he's on his knees, rising up to meet Urie, and Urie leans back to accommodate him. Urie's shoulders are so broad compared to his own--he can lean his full weight against him, and Urie doesn't budge, just wraps an arm around Mutsuki's waist to pull him against him.

Mutsuki digs his knees into the mattress and braces himself against Urie's body to rise to his knees, straddling Urie's legs, and when he looks at Urie he realizes with faint surprise that this position gives him the slightest height advantage. It's an unreal experience, to be looking down instead of looking up. Urie is watching him, eyes dark and hungry, and it should feel oppressive, to be looked at like that, it should feel confining, but from Urie, it doesn't.

How long has Urie been looking at him like this, beneath that perfect mask of his that hides all of his emotions? 

It's not sudden or an accident, Urie kissing him, he realizes. Urie letting Mutsuki pull him in. It's not a momentary act of passion, it's not a man and a woman acting on instinctual urges, because Urie had figured it out a while ago, that Mutsuki's body might be this way, but it's not who Mutsuki is. And with Urie, there are no accidents, there are no sudden moments of unreason: with Urie, everything is deliberate, a choice, another step in his ambition to get what he wants.

And Mutsuki, disgraced, isn't a good choice as a tool for ambition. If he manipulates Mutsuki around his finger, it won't bring Urie the power, the promotions, the accolades he's always striven for. And if Mutsuki isn't a tool for Urie to use, he must be something Urie wants. And how long has Mutsuki been an object of Urie's ambition?

"What?" Urie asks, and his voice is a little husky. "You have that look on your face."

"That look?"

Urie rolls his eyes. His arm around Mutsuki's waist squeezes tighter. "The one that means you're overthinking things."

Is he? Is he overthinking things? 

"I tend to do that," Mutsuki admits, tilting his head so his bangs fall over his eyes. "I'm in my own head too much."

Urie's other hand comes up to push Mutsuki's hair away and cup his cheek, so Mutsuki has no choice but to look Urie in the face again.

"So?" Urie says. "We'll get you out of there."

Urie's hand drifts to the hem of Mutsuki's pants, to push aside the fabric of his jeans and his briefs and slip beneath them.

Mutsuki doesn't do much thinking after that.

* * *

 

He's afraid to step through the doorway.

There's a door, but it's propped open. From his vantage, Mutsuki can make out a vanity with a built-in sink and a row of drawers, a hand sanitizer dispenser hanging from the wall above it. The overhead lights are too bright. Curtains frame the windows, shifting delicately in the air, like there's a window open, letting in the breeze.

Urie and Saiko leave him frozen in the hallway.

"Oh, you two came again!" Sensei's voice, bright and happy. "Sorry to inconvenience you, but we really appreciate it. You both have been so diligent."

Mutsuki listens to them talk, feeling numb the whole time. He can't do it. If one of them just would pull him in...better yet, if he could run away...how can he face them?

Finally Saiko and Urie step back out into the hallway. They both look at Mutsuki. Saiko is grinning, and a faint smile plays around the lines of Urie's mouth.

"Mucchan," Saiko says. "It's your turn."

But he can't.

His eyes fix on the tiles at his feet and his legs are paralyzed. He can't move. In this room is something he can't face, something he's afraid of seeing, and he doesn't have the strength to make himself do it.

He feels Urie's hand between his shoulderblades.

Saiko's palm against his lower back.

They both push.

Mutsuki stumbles into the room.

The light shifts--the windows are open on the other side, and sensei is saying, "Isn't it great they came to see her again," when Mutsuki stumbles into view and the room goes quiet.

He looks up.

And there's sensei.

A look of shock on his face.

Shock melts away into surprise.

"Mutsuki-kun, you came too!"

And it feels like everything is shaking, so Mutsuki grabs for his anchor--sensei's bright presence, standing there before him, and bows deeply. His fingers are clenched against the package in his hands.

"I'm deeply sorry I have neglected to visit you until now," Mutsuki says, drawing on formality to create a shield he can use to protect himself until he can find some way to navigate this. The plan he'd built up in his mind has gone blank, utterly blank. "I failed in my obligations and that is unacceptable."

Sensei laughs awkwardly. "Mutsuki-kun, what? Where is this coming from? You don't have any kind of special obligations... Anyway, please--"

"Mutsuki...is it?" Her voice cuts through the tension. Mutsuki freezes. "Why don't you look up?"

Her voice has a hypnotic power to it, a suggestion, and part of his mind thinks, _She's compelling me!_  and the other part thinks,  _I want to listen to what she has to say!_  

There's no special power to it, to her voice, it's just--a quality that it carries. A certain warmth that says, _Tell me your troubles_.

Mutsuki forces himself to look up.

There's a cradle on wheels next to the bed, but it's empty now. Sensei stands a bit to the left, and he's smiling, but there's concern written into his features. The fight at re:. No doubt sensei remembers it.

Mutsuki's eyes drift, and there, it's her, leaning into a hospital bed that's been propped up into sitting position. Her hair falls carelessly around her face, and she's watching Mutsuki with a calm, removed expression. She has no makeup on, her hair is unkempt, and there are dark bags beneath her eyes, but even so she's--

_Beautiful._

A small noise from the bundle in her arms, and she shifts. Nestled in her arms is a rolled-up blanket, and in the folds of that blanket, right at the crook of her elbow, a tiny face.

A baby.

Her face is small and delicate, eyes closed, with a delicate fuzz of pale white hairs curling across the top of her head. Something about her expression looks carefree, cheerful. She scrunches her nose up and yawns. Something like awe fills him at that smooth-cheeked, tiny face. Everything he thought he'd fought for falls away.

Mutsuki sees himself in a world where it's just him and that baby. And with every breath Mutsuki releases, the baby breathes in, and reversed, the shared air drawing them into each other.

 _I tried to kill this_ , Mutsuki thinks.

This tiny little thing that has nothing to do with him, except it breathes the same air he does, and lives in the same world he does, and loves the same person he does.

 _This tiny, innocent, helpless thing_.

He can feel his eyes burning, and he fights the sensation back with fury. They don't deserve to face his shame.

His back arches as he falls into a bow far deeper than is owed to a former superior and his wife, and holds his package out for her. "For you," he says. 

She takes it and sets it on her lap, careful in the way she rests the baby on her legs, leaning towards her torso. "What pretty wrapping paper," she remarks, as she begins to unwrap it slowly, not tearing it off but flicking a finger carefully beneath each piece of tape, and unfolding, like she's playing with origami, until the paper falls away there's a book in her hands. 

" _Tsukimonogatari_ ," she reads, running a hand over the paper jacket protecting the book's cover. The artist who painted it did a masterful job: a bright moon, hanging heavy above a white rabbit nestled in soft green grass, its face upturned to the sky.

 _We called her Rabbit_ , Investigator Suzuya had told him, _because of the mask she wore then. She was Amon-san's and Akira-san's case. She had the same mask when they showed up at CCG headquarters, and waaaah, that was a surprise!_

He'd come across the picture book in the children's section, and it had just seemed so--right.

She looks up at him then, and her smile is so wide and genuine, Mutsuki feels something cracking inside him. Like her smile is a physical blow.

"Mutsuki, right?" she asks. "Thank you so much. It's perfect."

She's too bright. Everyone in here is too bright.

Suddenly Urie's hand is on his shoulder, warm and strong, and Saiko has taken hold of his other hand.

"Mutsuki," she says again, and this time when Mutsuki looks at her it doesn't feel like he's going to shatter. She has such a kind smile that Mutsuki finds himself thinking, to his surprise, _I can see why sensei loves her_. 

And he tried to erase that smile.

"Mutsuki," she says again, and Mutsuki forces himself to look at her--Urie warm at his left and Saiko warm at his right, his points of contact with them hot anchors. His eyes are burning, but he's not crying.

"Would you like to hold the baby?"

It's like another blow, that question, but he doesn't feel any impact as it hits him. It trickles over him like warm water. Like a blessing. Like tears.

"Is it," he asks, and he wants to shake but he's telling his body, _no_ , "is it okay if I do?"

_Is it okay for me to touch her, when I tried to kill her because I tried to kill you?_

"She likes people," she says simply, slipping her hands beneath the tiny bundle on her lap, and lifts her up in a way that looks almost expert to Mutsuki, who knows nothing about babies and has no idea how equally little new parents know as well.

Urie and Saiko push him forward, until he's standing against the bed, knees brushing it.

She smiles up at him. "Cross your arms."

Mutsuki copies her nervously. "Like this?"

"Almost, but not quite. Put your right hand up a little. You have to support the head; babies aren't strong enough to hold up their own heads at first. Your other hand will have to rest just below her butt." Mutsuki shifts his arms according to her instructions. "Right, just like that. You ready?"

He's really not ready.

She leans forward and gently shifts the baby into his arms, then adjusts the position of Mutsuki's hands, until his left arm is curved down along the baby's spine, his left hand holding up the baby's upper legs, and his right arm is curled against it, his hand cradled against the lower part of the baby's skull. She feels so tiny, and so fragile. He's afraid he'll break her just by holding her. He's afraid to move.

He remembers that baby of his cousin's. How tiny it had seemed. How cruel it had been that the baby even existed.

And the woman, she's watching Mutsuki, and she looks--pleased.

"What's her name?" Mutsuki asks quietly.

"Ichika," she says, "it's written--oh, shit, I can't remember... Kaneki, how is it written again?"

"Geez, Touka-chan, you're hopeless," sensei says, and Mutsuki can feel him moving closer. _Touka_ , Mutsuki thinks. Not _that woman_ , not _her_ , her name is _Touka_. From the corner of his eye, he sees sensei's finger, extended, reaching out to brush against the baby's cheek. "It's written as _first blooming_. _Ichi_ as in one, and the onyomi of flower, _ka_ instead of _hana_."

"I always get kunyomi and onyomi confused..."

"I know, that's why you wanted me to name her, because you're terrible at Japanese."

"Don't sound so smug, you ass."

Their banter sounds so playful, and familiar. Sensei's voice is bright as a star, so full of happiness, a sound Mutsuki doesn't recognize in him. The woman--Touka--sounds like pleasure is suffusing her every note, even when she pretends to be upset.

Mutsuki looks down at the baby nestled in his arms. _First blooming_ , he thinks. A baby that's both human and ghoul. You wouldn't know it just by looking at her, the way she suddenly shudders and yawns again, and blinks her eyes open wide. They're bright grey, and staring up at Mutsuki in speculation.

"Aaaaaa," she says, "aaa---ahhhhh-aaaa!"

"She likes you!" sensei says, and he's right there at Mutsuki's side, beaming down at this tiny bundle of flesh in Mutsuki's arms. "Ichika-chaaaan," he croons, sticking his finger out for the baby to curl a finger around. "This is your big brother Mutsuki-kun."

Something jolts through Mutsuki like a shock.

"Mucchan-onii-chan!" Saiko yells, rushing forward to press a surprisingly delicate kiss to the baby's forehead. Mutsuki is desperately grateful for her sudden presence. "I like that! Mucchan should be an onii-chan."

Mutsuki looks down at the baby. She feels alien in his arms. This whole scenario feels alien: sensei and his wife, that woman named Touka, both of them smiling at him, the baby, watching him with wide, innocent eyes, Saiko bubbling with energy at his side, and somewhere behind him is Urie, keeping his distance, watching to make sure Mutsuki is okay.

He's not okay.

_Mucchan onii-chan!_

He doesn't know what's expected of him.

"Um," he says, "what does it mean...to be a big brother?"

He doesn't know. He has no frame of reference. He can only remember his own brother looking at him with cold, indifferent eyes. _Onii-san_ , he'd called him, the few times he'd had the courage to call out to him. A term he'd used because it was expected of him, not because he really thought of him as his brother. And never, ever  _onii-chan_.

What do you have to do, to be a brother who's called _onii-chan_?

Sensei has a studious look on his face, like he's really considering the question. "Well, first," he says, "you have to love her a lot."

Mutsuki looks at the baby again. Ichika, he thinks. _First blooming_. Half ghoul, half human. He doesn't feel any strong sense of love or hate, but...he thinks, if someone hurt her, he'd be upset. He'd want to hurt them. He thought he'd loved sensei so much he was willing to hurt him to have him back. He thought that was love.

This tiny, innocent thing... Hurting her would make him mad.

Is that love?

"Second," Touka says, "when she ties your hair up in ribbons, you endure it, or I'll beat you up."

It's Urie who says, "What the hell?"

"Joking, I'm joking," Touka says. "But if you're her big brother, you play with her. She needs people to play with her so she learns to understand the world."

"Like good and evil?" Saiko asks.

Touka smiles. "Kind of. Babies need to learn right and wrong. Like not tugging on someone's hair for attention because they like them."

"Oh," Saiko says, "that happened to me when I was little."

"See? His parents didn't teach him right from wrong very well."

"What does that have to do with being a big brother?" Mutsuki asks.

Sensei laughs softly. Touka smiles. "It's getting kind of side-tracked, isn't it? I only mean that to be a big brother, you have to teach her how to be a good person. But make sure she has fun along the way."

Teach her to be a good person?

How can they think Mutsuki is even qualified for that?

Touka is watching him, and there's a look on her face that's almost familiar. 

"I've killed people too, you know," she says, and he feels the space between them caving. "And not just in self-defense. I did it because I was angry and I hated them."

He has the baby in his arms. He thinks, how easy it would be, to twist his hands, and snap the baby's neck.

Snap the baby's neck.

_Her name is Ichika_.

"Hinami," Touka says, "maybe you don't know her yet. But Hinami's parents were killed by a ghoul investigator. Do you know Amon? He's a--kind of a friend of Kaneki's, and apparently he's a dove--sorry, I mean, a CCG--legend."

"Everyone knows Amon Koutarou," Urie supplies. "He's a ghoul now, isn't he?"

"Right, a one-eyed ghoul like Kaneki, because of Aogiri Tree," Touka agrees. "Anyway, his first partner is the one who killed Hinami's parents, and then he went after her. She was still really young at the time. I was...geez, what...seventeen?"

She looks to Kaneki for confirmation.

"You were seventeen, I was eighteen. Hinami-chan was thirteen. It was only a couple months after I was turned into a ghoul and started working at Anteiku."

"I really hated you then," Touka says. "You were such a wimp."

Kaneki laughs. "I thought you were pretty scary, myself."

There's a picture unfolding before Mutsuki's eyes, of a sensei he doesn't know, and a picture of a woman he hated because the only thing he knew about her was that she had what he wanted. And the more the picture of that woman fills in, gains lines, definition, color, the less he feels like can hate her. She's becoming too real for that.

He looks back down at the baby in his arms. She's watching him with wide-eyed curiosity.

"Anyway," Touka says, "I was pretty hot-headed when I was younger. I got angry easily, and lost my temper. And when that happened to Hinami--Hinami, her family didn't even hunt for food--they didn't want to kill people. They came to our cafe, where the ghoul running our ward would distribute food to ghouls who didn't want to kill anyone. Hinami and her mother, they were so gentle and kind, and when that happened to them, I was so furious. All I felt was rage. I wanted to lash out and kill someone in revenge.

"So I did. I killed a 20th ward investigator. It was so easy. I thought, 'This is justice.' And then I tried to set a trap for the others, and--well, one thing led to another, and it didn't quite go as planned, but I killed that Investigator Mado. And it felt so good at the time. But then I saw a wedding ring on his finger, and I realized even someone like him had a family... I felt pretty shitty about myself for a while after that."

"Does Associate Special Class Mado know?" Urie asks. "That it was you?"

"I told her myself," Touka says. Mutsuki looks up at her in surprise. "When she was staying with Goat. And I introduced her to Hinami, and told her what had happened."

"Does she hate you?" Saiko asks.

"I think she might have," Touka says, "if she hadn't met Hinami. But once you meet Hinami, hate is impossible."

"Amon-san told me," Kaneki adds quietly, "that Akira-san feels too empty to feel hatred anymore."

They all fall to silence for a moment, each of them reflecting, caught up in their own thoughts from hearing that sort of story. It must be pretty typical, for a ghoul's story. A life spent running and hiding, and then feeling sorrow and hatred when their loved ones are killed. Almost a mirror to the stories of the people who have lost their loved ones to ghouls.

Mutsuki looks back down at the baby in his arms. She's dozing again, her eyelashes a faint, semi-translucent shadow against her eyelids. She's breathing in and out quietly, making faint, soft baby breathing sounds.

If it had actually been someone else that had killed his family, how would he have felt?

He probably wouldn't have cared. A part of him, even, would have been happy.

"So what I'm saying," Touka finally says, "is that in this messed-up kind of world, we all have skeletons in our closets. We've all killed or hurt someone that someone else cares about. The past," she says, drawing her hand decisively through the air in a sharp line, as if cutting something, "shouldn't matter. What matters is what we do going forward.

And Mutsuki suddenly feels a soft touch against the hand he has curved under Ichika's head, a hand brushing against his, and it's Touka's hand, and she's smiling at him again.

"So, Mutsuki. Let's put the past aside. Going forward, I'd like us to be friends."

To be friends.

Friends.

Friends with the woman he'd tried to kill. Friends with the woman sensei loves. Friends with the mother of this tiny infant he's holding, this child who feels to him like something like salvation is possible. Out of the corner of his eye he can see sensei watching him, and his expression is studiously neutral, but there's a faint glimmer of hopefulness there he can't hide.

Friends.

Is he even capable of such a thing? After what he's already done to his own friends, to the people he calls family--

He drops his gaze so his hair falls to cover his eyes, hiding them from their patient, probing, waiting looks. He can feel his hand pinned, between the warmth of the baby he's cradling and the warm touch of Touka's hand on his.

He doesn't know how to say what he wants to say.

"I'm afraid I don't make a very good friend," Mutsuki finally tries. "I'm selfish. I lie, and I betray, and I steal, and I hurt people. Hurting people is all I've ever done in my life. I'm...a terrible friend, really. I don't know how people relate to each other." He's holding the baby against his chest like she's a lifeline, like the very presence of her soft warmth in his arms, the fact that he, that someone like him, someone as wretched as him, is allowed to hold her, is some sort of absolution.

_Oh_ , he realizes. _I already love her_.

This tiny, innocent person in his arms who has the potential to grow up happy and unharmed, without doing harm to others.

He feels the tears he's been fighting all afternoon suddenly release, trickling down his face. One drips from his chin and lands on Ichika's cheek.

"I--" he says, his voice wavering, "I'd...I'd like to...try. If I'm allowed. I-If someone like me...is allowed."

_I want to try to be friends_.

A hand, heavy on his hair, and it's sensei at his side, sensei gently forcing his gaze up so he can see into Mutsuki's eyes. "Of course you're allowed," sensei says. "Of course you are, Mutsuki-kun. Because in your heart, you're a good person."

The tears come harder after that--somehow they get the baby out of his arms and she's passed off somewhere, to her mother, or to her crib, Mutsuki doesn't know, but Saiko's arms are there, tight around his waist, and Urie is at his right and sensei at his left, and all of them are holding him as he cries and cries, as his barriers shatter and all of his tightly-wound feelings find release. A warm, tight circle of embrace with Mutsuki at its center. Comfort. Protection. Warmth he's never known his entire life.

And it is, a little bit.

Like that.

An absolution.

**Author's Note:**

> "Kagome kagome" is a Japanese children's game where children join hands and sing while walking in a circle around a child sitting on a chair in the center of the circle blindfolded. When the verse ends, the blindfolded child, who is the oni, or demon, has to guess the name of the child standing behind their chair.
> 
> "Tsukimonogatari" translates to "Story of the Moon." The presence of the rabbit on the cover is meant to imply that the story of the rabbit in the moon (the east Asian equivalent of the man in the moon) and autumn moon-viewings (tsukimi).
> 
> Onyomi and kunyomi: kanji typically have two different readings: the Japanese representation of the original Chinese reading of the character, and the actual Japanese word. In compound words and phrases, the reading of a kanji can change depending on whether the onyomi or kunyomi is used.
> 
> I'm trying to be as culturally respectful as I can in how I represent Mutsuki's dysphoria, so when I use really vague, general phrases that might seem outdated, I'm trying to respect the fact that cultural dialogue about trans-ness hasn't permeated Japanese society to the extent it has the west, and as self-isolated as Mutsuki is, he likely wouldn't have the kind of language we would have to describe his body, his experiences, or his relationship to others. If it seems like I'm using outdated terminology or turns of phrase in how he reflects on his gender, that's because I'm trying to reflect Mutsuki's experiences not as a trans man, but as a Japanese trans man, based on my limited understanding of how those experiences differ from trans men in the US. I welcome any correction to my portrayal of his experience.


End file.
